I know bec is reviewing this one, but i have borrowed if from my video store and am going to watch it as well. I also re-watched an inconvenient truth last night. Interesting point Al Gore raises about covering scientific truths, and the leaked memos he presented… something to ponder.

Howdy all, just thought i would post some quotes from the ‘Thank you for Smoking’ special feature ‘America: Living in Spin’ that I showed ya’ll in class yesterday.

so here goes…

AARON ECKHART (Actor)

“You never know what to believe anymore because it’s all spin really. Everything these days is damage control”

ROB LOWE (Actor)

“We spin everything, we spin our relationships and we are constantly spun to by the entertainment industry, by politics”

WILLIAM H MACY (Actor)

“The notion of spinning the truth is very relevant”

“Most politicians would say that’s the name of the game and its never going to change, so why fight it? It’s all about spinning information to your point of view, good, bad or indifferent. Its spinning information”

“Some people lie a little bit for the ‘greater good’ but what those people are is liars”

DAVID KOFCHNER (Director)

“From the time you wake up in the morning everyone’s spinning, I think it’s part of what’s happened in this country, is where is the truth? And now people are willing to accept no truth, or a substitute for truth”

“We live in a world filled with political correctness, because there is no more honesty, and so spin has taken over”

“A bit of Bull Shit goes a long way, it make us feel better”

“The danger of spin is that it becomes such a part of our daily lives, that we are all willing to accept it”

I think that this raises some key issues as to what we are investigating, in terms of political correctness, spinning the truth, liars and spin doctors and altering information.

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of all frontiers.”

“There are good people from both parties[politics] that hold this issue at arms length, to acknowledge it, to recognize it. Because the moral imperative to make big change is inescapable.” – AL Gore‘Ignorance Bliss’
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

“The Era of Procrastination, of Half-Measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a Period of Consequences.” – Sir Winston Churchill, 12 November 1936

“Separating the truth from the fiction & the accurate connections from the misunderstanding is part of what you learn here. But when the warnings are accurate and based on sound science, then we, as human beings, whatever country we live in, have to find a way to make sure that the warnings are heard and responded to.” – AL Gore

“Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the “body of facts” that exist in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy in the publics mind.” (Leak hidden agenda of those that oppose to the Surgeon General report between tobacco and lung cancer)

“Scientists have the obligation to present the truth as they currently see it.”- Al Gore

“Scientists being forced to write false testimonies, prosecuted, ridiculed, deprived of jobs and income, being silenced, simply because the facts that they have discovered led them to an inconvenient that they are insisted on telling.” – Al Gore

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair

Al Gore mission: “trying to understand whats in those people’s minds that serves as obstacles to them to understanding [global warming] issue… move it, demolish it, blow it up, the only way to do it is to communicate this REALLY CLEARLY… city by city, person by person, family by family. Enough minds will change and we will cross a threshold.”

” There are lots of people that go from denial to despair without the intermediate step of actually doing something about the problem. The solutions are in our hands we just have to have the determination to make them happen.”

“… and that is what’s at stake. Ability to live on planet earth, to have a future as a civilisation i believe that this is a moral issue. It is your time to seize this issue. It is our time to rise again and to secure our future. One day there will come a time when the future generation will ask these questions: ‘What were our parents thinking? Why didn’t they wake up when they had a chance?’ We should adhear to these question now. “